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A recent TV ad by the anonymous donors hiding behind the label "Crossroads GPS" alleged that, while the state’s attorney general, North Dakota Democratic Senate candidate Heidi Heitkamp "spent taxpayer dollars to buy private planes."
Viewers had no way of knowing that in 1993 the federal government had given the two aging T-42 Beechcraft Barons to the state free of charge for purposes revealed in a July 28, 1993, Grand Forks Herald headline: "N.D. Gets 2 Old Federal Planes to Fight Drugs."
Nor have Republicans been spared third-party deceit.
On the eve of the July 31 Texas run-off election to decide the Republican nominee for the open Senate seat, a super-PAC ad sponsored by a group hiding behind the label "Texas Conservatives Fund" featured a distraught mother who falsely linked the Tea Party favorite Ted Cruz to her son’s suicide.
Since victory in a single race may determine control of the U.S. Senate, states such as Hawaii are in the third-party groups’ sights. The fact is worrisome because noncandidate ads tend to be more inaccurate than candidate- sponsored fare.
Hawaii is experiencing a rare opening for one of its two U.S. Senate seats due to the retirement of veteran lawmaker Daniel Akaka. U.S. Rep. Mazie Hirono would seem to be the odds-on favorite in heavily Democratic Hawaii, but she faces formidable opposition from former two-term Gov. Linda Lingle, a moderate Republican. Third-party mainland money is already rolling in for both candidates, with much more to come in the next eight weeks.
Though less intense, expect super-PAC money also in Hawaii’s 1st Congressional District race between Democrat incumbent U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa and Republican Charles Djou, who held this office for almost eight months in 2010.
An Annenberg Public Policy Center study found that since December, 10 third-party groups spent more than $108 million in ad dollars on the presidential contest alone, over half (51 percent to be precise) of it on 35 ads containing deceptive or misleading claims.
The rules governing candidate and noncandidate commercials differ.
Where stations are obliged to take even blatantly false ads by federal candidates, they can reject third-party ones outright. Because they don’t have to air them, stations can be sued if their content is libelous or defamatory. (See http://www.flackcheck.org/stations/faq under item No. 11 for FCC regulations.)
We don’t know exactly what motivated the decision, but after one of the North Dakota stations notified Crossroads GPS that the Heitkamp attorneys had sent a letter showing that the plane claim was deceptive, the super-PAC "voluntarily" pulled the ad because of a "content issue."
Media stations can protect the public from deception in a second way by doing what WFAA did in Dallas when it debunked the deceptive ad about Cruz on air and online.
The need for both station vigilance as well as good on-air and online fact checking is magnified this year by the fact that the post-Citizens United world has elicited unprecedented levels of third-party advertising. According to OpenSecrets.org, between Jan. 1 and Aug. 6, 718 super-PACs spent more than $181 million.
Like stations being flooded with third-party ads in presidential battleground states, those in markets with closely contested U.S. Senate races have the wherewithal to create quality fact checking because third-party ads bring in as much as three to five times the revenue as the same time sold to federal candidates or product advertisers.
As CBS President Les Moonves told an entertainment law conference in March: "Super-PACs may be bad for America but they’re very good for CBS."
By insisting on the accuracy of third-party ads and regularly debunking deceptive political content, stations can translate some of their third-party profits into protection for their viewers.
To inform local stations that Hawaii values both clean air and clean airwaves, go to FlackCheck.org’s "Send E-mail to Stations." More than 20,000 emails have already been sent from our site to station managers around the nation. The process takes less than a minute.
Special convention perks target special donations
Democratic groups rewarded donors in Charlotte, N.C., all last week with special events, including a Wednesday dinner with celebrity chef Alice Waters and a “Super-O-Rama” festival following President Barack Obama’s nomination acceptance speech.
Like their Republican counterparts in Tampa, Fla., the previous week, the Democratic groups have used the party’s national convention as a way to reach out to donors, thanking them with perks — and, of course, asking for more cash. Invitations to some of the top events were posted online by Politico and the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington-based watchdog group.
Democratic outside groups want to leverage these convention activities for an infusion of cash, since they’re being out-raised by the Republican groups, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission.
Republican-leaning super-PACs had spent more than $161 million through the end of July, compared with the $45 million Democratic super-PACs had spent, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based campaign-finance research group.
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